I first found out about this book from TikTok (manic Pixie E-Girl by Nate Lemcke). I had seen the drama and wanted to come to a conclusion for myself. I did not trust what people were saying from only reading the sample, and I thought I would hear Nate Lemcke out on his commentary on "the damaging world of hypersexualized online environments."
Oh my god, I shouldn't have. The way he marketed this was very disingenuous.
In the first half of the book, I remained optimistic. Most of the gross stuff could be justified. His main character is aware of and actively working on not having sex or relationships and watching porn. The explicit sexual fantasy of a young girl who is described in a very childlike way (she has a small body, she says "pretty please" and "daddy," she stomps her foot and pouts, etc.) is jarring, but if this is supposed to be a commentary on how hypersexual online spaces affects us, then I guess it makes sense.
I do think the articulation of the issues the MC is dealing with is poignant. He uses relationships, women, and sex to cope with things in an unhealthy manner. I think a lot of people can relate to this. He also says that he craves female validation and approval. After growing up with a single mom and female teachers, he's shaped a lot of his self-worth around female approval. I think a lot of women can really relate to this, too, and the urge to receive male validation.
This made me hopeful. "Perhaps this book will explore how to deconstruct these damaging thoughts!" Unfortunately, no. As the story progresses, we find out that the real moral is that we as a society should not shame people for their “natural” sexual desires. There is no deconstructing but a complete acceptance of a hedonistic, anti-government, do-what-you-want society.
Oh, are you confused about the anti-government comment? Hold on… we'll get there.
First, I must address how Nate treats women within this book. He claims that he is not misogynistic and is actually a champion of women's rights.
The women in this book do not feel real. Our manic pixie e-girl is supposed to feel that way (i think?), but I also thought part of the story was to humanize her… he doesn't. Nope. Their relationship ends with him finally getting to sleep with her (to save the world, of course). She runs a sex cult through chaturbate and talks about conspiracy theories. All she cares about is making "whores" out of fellow young women.
The ex-girlfriend is demonized for not wanting to have a bum ex-boyfriend fraternizing with young cam girls. The therapist is the only woman who makes a sexual boundary (she also gives shit advice in their first session). The girl he "flirts" with at the grocery store would have more realistically asked for an employee escort to her car rather than give him his number. A woman tells him that girls actually DO want to be sent unsolicited dirty texts. In fact, the dirtier, the better!
I can not believe this man has ever had a meaningful relationship with a woman, ever. In fact, the whole thing is very lonely. There are no positive female relationships (I guess our cam girl is supposed to be one – the girl who lets him divulge all his sexual depravities). There are also no positive male relationships or even characters. All fathers suck. There are no male friends. Is this the commentary? It's isolating? I think that is too intelligent for Lemcke to point out. And if he did, he did nothing to solve it but says, "fuck it, who cares?"
I really don't want to go into the government conspiracy. It's batshit. Basically, the government produces the Mandella Effects with time jumps. Having sex with Abbie fixes what went wrong during 9/11. Crypto and TikTok will protect us from the government. Blah blah blah.
The big twist? His dad was the reason this time jump during 9/11 went askew. His dad caught him recreating a pornographic image with the girl next door (they were about 11 years old). This caused his dad to be stressed during the manifestation time jump. It is important to note that it was not his idea to recreate the porn. No, the little girl lured him to his first act of sexual deviancy. It was a running theme that women were always the sirens. Men WANT to be good. They just can't with all these succubi.
I did not go over the third subplot. It basically mirrors the main one but is set in a fantasy world. The MC in that plot does not have the sexual depravities of our modern-day MC, but he still gets to fuck the "promiscuous young coquette" on a stage at the end. There are times when it introduced some themes I thought could redeem this book, but it appears they were only accidental as they were quickly left behind.
Manic Pixie E-Girl by Nate Lemcke is a super weird rambling of conspiracies and hedonistic and sexual fantasies. It was really manipulative for him to say that it deals with women's issues at all when women are never given any inner dialogue or perspective or even a personality. Even grosser, he brought publicity to his book by "reading a book from a female author every day" on TikTok. The only "finding the humanity of women" moment in this book is a STRETCH. In the last two pages, before he has sex with his dream girl for thousands to see, he says it was good they were friends first (Were they really? They just used each other).
The pacing is pretty good. The writing is not good. The plot and the content are batshit insane. 2/5 stars for being somewhat entertaining.
by thighpeen
50 Comments
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Thank you for your service. I will stay away from this book.
I feel like I read a ChatGPT prompt called “rage baiting in the time of TikTok”.
>Having sex with Abbie fixes what went wrong during 9/11.
Wow.
Dude read a wiki summary of the Illuminatus! Trilogy and decided “this needs even more psychosexual weirdness.”
This is one of the first books where I would have genuinely preferred that it was all an auditory hallucination.
Having never heard of this book, you’ve taken me on a journey I don’t think I was fully prepared or equipped for.
So this is the second long ass review of a self- published book in the last eight hours. I don’t know if this is some weird rage bait advertising thing or what.
It is clear from the opening chapters that the title, blurb and cover do not line up.
The author also knows this as they posted this book on Reddit asking for feedback and was repeatedly told they did not match.
Whether these posts are also part of some kind of controversy stoking promotion or the result of controversy stoking promotion, I don’t know.
But yeah there’s no value giving this self published work any attention whatsoever.
This is the second review of this book I’ve seen posted in the last day. It’s…interesting, considering it’s such a terrible book.
Oh, so it’s one of those incel sex fantasy books that marketed itself as a deconstruction of the MPDG trope but isn’t.
> The government produces the Mandella Effects with time jumps. Having sex with Abbie fixes what went wrong during 9/11.
What…
Many of the posts from r/books are people talking about books they hate.
I’ve never heard of this, but after reading that….I regret learning about it.
Never heard of this book, but what the fuckity fuck?
Oh my god I didn’t think it could get any worse and then I read ‘9/11’!!
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It’s definitely a trend now to poorly review his book (which isn’t to say it’s undeserved, it’s a disgusting book) and I worry that he’ll use that to a get a better foothold as a creator in the future. Hopefully he just crawls into a hole and shrivels up but part of me is dreading the release of another book.
As a connoisseur of awful books written by weirdos to satisfy/justify their messed up fantasies by marketing them on the cursed magical swampland of TikTok, I feel an intense need to experience this disaster.
Sounds like he just writing out his fetishes or something . Then marketed it in a way that could help the sales
Thank you OP, I’ll pick up something better, off my tbr pile.
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> this time jump during 9/11 went askew……during the manifestation time jump.
Okay, I started skimming a little before this, but wtf? Time travel? And a fantasy world too?
The only good MPDG deconstruction I’ve read is John Green’s Paper Towns. People love to hate on John Green because he wrote a lot of YA books but teens are the people who need a message like that the most.
I saw the title and was immediately like nope
Their last names are Goodknight (male protagonist) and Cadabra ??? 🤨😆🤨
It’s weird that there’s two reviews of it on r/Books right now. But I sure am glad there’s reviews of this on r/Books too. What a wonderful read this morning.
Dude is an incel edgelord who blames women for how he is treated. And the point of his book, accepting your sexuality, is just trying to get people to accept more unsavory things, which is why the ‘love interest’ is minor coded.
Man, what?
This sounds like the new “Diary of an Oxygen Thief”
Thank you for your service, but also, I wish I never even read this either. You’re braver than me.
Wow, that book sounds like trash. I’m sorry that it exists and that you had to read it.
The whole thing is 100% just tiktok rage bait, but I am so fascinated with how anyone could come up with this plot, let alone write it and release it into the world. He should be studied.
This man is ragebaiting and is probably getting off to it. He follows an obscene amount of meme & sexual accounts on instagram, overall seems mentally not stable. He has no idea how to relate to women outside of perceiving them as sexual objects. He wanted to “lift women authors” by reading already very popular authors to promote his book. Like it never occurred to him to read books written by women until he wanted to sell his own book.
FUCK dishonest authors who write heavy themes horribly. All my homies HATE dishonest authors who write heavy themes horribly.
I saw one tiktok with the author and his eyes gave me the creeps and I noped away real quick. Thank you for your service.
>the real moral is that we as a society should not shame people for their natural sexual desires
In a vacuum, I agree with this 100%.
Reading the rest of your review, the book sounds like very problematic trash, but if you’re identifying the “real moral” as you put it as problematic, I vehemently disagree.
Just skimming through the text and: “Having sex with Abbie fixes what went wrong during 9/11” HUH
wow i’d never even heard of this until now but the set-up you described could have made for a compelling modern *Lolita* but then everything went so far away from any recognizable place and now I must hate-read it.
For science I NEED to read this book because I have a crippling curiosity but I also do not want to give this man money, thank you for the review
I’m curious how much the author earns from TikTok. Maybe he’s really sharp, and designed a book to maximize engagement.
Though I suppose if he was, he could just write a better book and make more money.
I love reading trash authors get dragged but at the same time— it works in their favor and I wish it didn’t
And I know eventually this will get reviewed by one of the many book youtubers whose sole purpose is to read utter shit so I don’t have to
My condolences for your sacrifice
I’m convinced Lemcke knew exactly what he was doing. (haven’t read the book admittedly) Everything I’ve seen about this and all the rage it stoked has gotten him SO much attention, which I imagine has translated to sales.
Sounds like he should have called it *Fuck Club*. But I suppose somebody’s already done that.
He took alt lit to its logical conclusion. At least Mira Gonzalez is a woman.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: anytime a dude tries to insist, when nobody has asked, about how much they support feminist causes and “totally get it”, the more likely it is they’re a predator. I’ll make exceptions for academics to a degree of they’ve ACTUALLY devoted their academic time to studying those subjects, but even as a dude it creeps me the fuck out when I meet or talk to the type of dudes I’m describing. They always have this gross slimy “feel” to me and I’m rarely surprised when it comes out they were secretly sexually harassing (or worse unfortunately) some girl(s). Usually I can empathize with people to some degree but with those types of dudes I got nothing because I simply don’t understand *why* they always seem to feel and think what they’re doing isn’t inappropriate. I honestly think that deep down they know what they’re doing is wrong, but they’re hiding behind this facade of social support so when the hammer finally falls they can point to their past as a defense. I wouldn’t be surprised if this author legitimately thinks his work is in support of feminism and the like and perhaps this work is a cry for validation that his views are okay, but they’re not and I seriously doubt he’ll register the criticism and update his mindset, because they NEVER do.
I only had to read a few paragraphs to conclude ‘yep, this is an incel writing what he thinks an ally would write’.
This belongs in /r/PieceOfShitBookClub/
I have heard nothing about this book but nothing could have prepared me for this synopsis
Truly a modern day Ulysses
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/s just in case
How to you get pacing right but story and writing wrong?
Sounds like an incel wrote it…
9/11 … 9/11 ?!?!